President Bush, if you can help it, please ignore the will of the American people.

If you can help it.

Sometimes, in its infinite wisdom, the American public can be wrong. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, really. We all make mistakes. In the case of Border Patrol agents Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos, the mistaken Americans are a group of proud nationalists who have idolized the pair as national heroes – when in reality, their story is dripping with slime.

As they tell it, on Feb. 17, 2005, Compean and Ramos spotted a suspicious vehicle on the American side of the Rio Grande River. When the driver noticed the agents, he bolted toward the river, ignoring repeated commands to stop.

When he fled, the driver allegedly pointed something shiny at Agent Compean, and fearing that his life was in danger, Compean fired at the suspect. Agent Ramos joined the scene and fired an additional shot at the suspect. The suspect, unfazed, continued onward and disappeared into the river.

The agents, believing they had missed the suspect, turned then to his vehicle. Inside, they found almost 800 pounds of marijuana with a street value of almost $1 million.

The agents thought the story would end there. They were wrong.

The drug smuggler, who was hit once in the ass, came forward after the incident claiming that the agents fired at an unarmed, frightened man. As a result, Agents Compean and Ramos today sit in a Texas jail, where they’re serving 12- and 11-year sentences, respectively.

This sounds like one hell of an injustice, right? If you think that, you’re not alone.

Citizens across the county have expressed their disgust that the American government would punish two men who did their duty and put their lives on the line to protect our country from foreign invasion.

If only that were the full story.

According to John Sutton, the U.S. attorney who filed charges against the agents, evidence points to a cover-up. The men picked up their shell casings from the scene, failed to report the shooting to their supervisors and neglected to mention the incident in their written reports.

These actions acutely contradict Border Patrol protocol and indicate that the agents purposefully or mistakenly broke regulations, and then tried to hide what happened.

But even then, we don’t have all the details of the case, and we never will. There’s only one place all those facts come out, and that’s in a trial.

An independent jury, carefully selected to exclude bias, received all the available facts and still convicted the agents. That puts the final nail in the guilty casket.

Who are we as outsiders with limited information to put ourselves as a higher judge and jury?

This point is lost on the protesters. Word spreads through cable news, and from inbox to inbox, that two Border Patrol agents are sitting in jail for doing their jobs. Their story becomes one of an injustice at the hands of the big bad government, which is too afraid of offending relations with Mexico to stand up for its bravest.

What inflames the protesters even more is that these agents were not fighting fires or ordinary crime; they were fighting the newest enemy that Americans love to hate: illegal immigration.

Frustration over illegal immigration has been on the rise since 2001, when Republicans made fighting it a central issue of their majority platform. The post-9/11 recession boiled the blood even more, as illegal immigrants were blamed for just about all of America’s economic problems: job losses, high taxes, Medicare deficits, low wages, narcotics supplies, etc.

For most, their anger has been quietly brewing for six years. When the case of Compean and Ramos was brought to light, many Americans broke their silence and made their demands heard. Unfortunately, people were listening.

A group of Republican congressmen are now demanding that President Bush pardon the two agents and set them free. The congressmen are led by Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), my home representative, who has gone so far as to say Bush would face impeachment if the agents are injured or killed in prison.

While interning in Washington, D.C. last quarter, I personally fielded calls from citizens upset about the indictment of the agents. I sympathize with their frustrations that the agents work a thankless job and keep dangerous drugs and unlawful people off the streets.

But the bottom line is that no matter how heroic the circumstances, no one is above the law. It’s hard to do, but when our soldiers in Iraq violate military law, their peers have no choice but to bring them before a jury and try them in a court of law. If our troops don’t get immunity, Border Patrol agents shouldn’t either.

This could have been a story of two American heroes. But these men, who many have put upon a pedestal, are not heroes. Premeditated or not, they covered up what happened, and that makes them crooked.

It’s not always easy to do what’s right. But these are the decisions that define our nation. Will America do what feels right, or will it do what is right? In this case, only one man has the power to do what’s right: nothing.

President Bush, don’t let me down.